Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1887-12-23
THE MEXICAN'S CUISINE.
HOW FOOD IS PREPARED IN OUR
SISTER REPUBLIC"
A Typical Mexican Kitchen The
"Stafr of life, A Boiled Con-
plomePation after SouO

A Typical Mexican Kitchen The
STAR of life. A Boiled Con-
Elomeration after Soup.
tits an unquestionable fact, writes Fan
ME B. Ward from Mexico, that the cuisine
is fair criterion of the utilization of any
naticn-and that of Mexico is as unique
as the dress aud manners of her people.
The climate, no doubt, as we'll as the
Moorish architecture of the house, has
much to do about it. In this hot coun-
try, and in these windOwless kitchens,
steady fires are out of the question, did
not the scarcity and high price of fuel
prevent where trees do not abound nor
coal mines exist. When guarled and
crooked sticks are bought by weight-at
the rate of a cent and half per pound
and coal, brought from great distances,
is SIG to $40 per ton, naturally economy
in fuel is prime consideration. A typi-
cal Mexican Kitchen has neither stove,
table, chair nor cupboard the clean
swept clay floor, an adobe shelf against
the wall aud few hooks and pegs an
swering every purpose. In the houses of
the rich an adobe range is built into the
| wall, which is really long, narrow box,
made of snn-baked clay and partitioned
off with little compartments, within
each of which handful of charcoal may
be consumed. The middle classes use a
big clay jar, or pot, in lieu Of range, in
which charcoal is also burned, while the
poor have "all outdoors for kitchen,
aDdbuild their tiny fire of sticks wher-
ever it is most convenient. The cooking
utensils are seldom of iron, because here
that metal is very scarce and dear, but
earthen pots are almost universally used
instead of the kettles and frying-pans to
which northern housekeepers are accus-
toned. 1t seems incredible that dinner
! of several courses can be prepared over a
charcoal pot not much larger than a peck
measure, the various edibles all cooked
in smaller pots set within it. Let us OBJ
serve some of the dishes. Perhaps tho
most.important part of the menu is the
tortild, or unleavened pan cake, the
Mexican "staf of life "and staple article
of food. It is made of common field
corn, soaked in lime water, and then
crushed into paste on stone me'Gte with
stone roller. The women of the house
hold go through the entire laborious pro
, cess as many time every day as there are
meals to be eaten, kneeling upon the
floor behind the low metate. The paste
is then mixed with little water, with
no salt or soda, and small masses of il
are fattened into little cakes, much likC
English soones or Yankee buckwheats
spatted into shape between the hands
and baked Immediately on o fiat stone
or piece of iron or tin, over the fire
Throughout all Mexico tortitias have beer
in use from the earliest times, with nc
change in the manner of making them
except that for the noble Aztecs in
Montezuma's time the leaves of various
medical plants were kneaded in with the
dough.
Then there is pucharo, or the boilet
conglomeration that always follows th'
soup, consisting of mutton, beef, bacon
fowls, sausage, garbanzos "a large white
beam, small gourds, squash, greens
pears, apples and every other seed, roo
and vegetable known to man, all boileC
together, piece of each piled npon you
plate, and sauce of herbs, tomatoes anc
red-hot chilli poured over it. At ever,
Mexican dinner, 365 days in the year
the third course is invariably puchart
after caldo (brothN, and the stew of rice
vermicelli or macaroni, mixed with toma
toes, cheese or sour milk. There is mole
which means any kind of fish, flesh O
fowl, with sauce of roasted chill pep
pers, which turns the whole thing to ;
deep, dark red and is fiery enough tt
draw tears from the eyes of graveI
image. There is the tamale, innocenr
enough in its looks to tempt baby, bu
so hot with chill within that ones throa
needs to be triple-plated with tin. 1t is
made of red peppers, tomatoes and
onions, with chopped meat, rolled up ii
tortilla dough and put inside corn husk,
which favors them through and through
and really they are not bad when ones
"inner man" becomes hardened tc
the chill. Another delicacy is known
as enchilades made of tortilla dough
rolled over an unexpressible conundrum
of chopped chickens, red peppers, greer
tomatoes, garlic, raisns, and HEAVIER
knows what These are also enclosed il
corn husks and boiled, and are very good
| cdliHS IL OHc IL uOL toO pdINiSului 10 w
the component parts Of the conundrum
and the dirt it may incidentally contain
There are also boiled. nopals, or fruit O.
the "prickly pear species" of cacti
bananas fried in lard goats milk cheese
to.be eaten with honey; and last, but
by no means least, frejoles, or red beans
which everybody in Mexico eats at leas
twice day, and which Immediately
preccde the desert at every we 'l-regula
ted dinner. They are first parboiled il
water, after which the cook takes the
stewing jar, pours out the water, throws
the beans into the air and catches then
again in the jar, keeping up the opera
tion until they are quite cold, when the!
are mixed with ch Ii and fried in fat. Al
to the messes eaten by the Indians,
cannot speak from experimental knowl
edge, for even that journalistic fervoI
which will lead the wandering scribe tC
the topmost icy peaks of sky piercing
mountains, and to the lowest depths Of
subterranean caverns, fails utterly wher
it comes to eating snails, pounded flies
grasshoppers, fish iutestines, mosquitoes
eggs, etc.
Rats's Teeth.